20303: (Chamberlain) Haiti leader slams Jamaica over Aristide visit (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Michael Christie and Ibon Villelabeitia

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 12 (Reuters) - Haiti's new leader fired a
diplomatic broadside at Jamaica on Friday for allowing ousted President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide to visit, while U.S. and French troops came under
renewed attack by gunmen.
     Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, who was sworn in on Friday, said
Aristide's planned return to the Caribbean had already stoked tensions, and
Jamaica's decision to allow the former slum priest to visit from next week
was an "unfriendly act."
     Latortue announced he might fly to Haiti's Caribbean neighbor this
weekend to pursue an agreement with Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson
to limit Aristide's stay.
     "Since the word was known yesterday afternoon that Aristide is coming
to Jamaica we have observed an increase in tensions in Port-au-Prince,"
Latortue told reporters.
     He voiced his objections as U.S. Marines reported they had fought new
gunbattles in a city where many are seething over Aristide's departure, and
that French forces had also come under attack.
     The Marines, leading a 2,550-strong international peace force, have
fought half a dozen battles -- killing four people -- since they landed
hours after Aristide fled into exile on Feb. 29.
     Aristide, ousted by a month-long revolt and by U.S. pressure to quit,
has insisted from exile in the Central African Republic that he is still
president.
     Latortue, 69, a former foreign minister and U.N. official, was
inaugurated in a hastily called ceremony a few hours after his predecessor,
Aristide appointee Yvon Neptune, delivered an embittered resignation speech
and sped to the airport.
     "I will do everything in my power to merit the confidence of the
people. The failure of this government will be the failure of the nation,"
Latortue said in the gleaming white National Palace from which Aristide
ruled.
     Earlier, he told reporters he had talked to Jamaican leader Patterson.
"He has pledged that he will try to make Aristide's stay in Jamaica as
short as possible," Latortue said.
     Aristide, regarded as a messiah by many of the poor he championed but
accused of despotism and corruption by his enemies, was expected to arrive
on Tuesday on a visit that Jamaica originally said could last up to 10
weeks.
     He was not expected to ask for political asylum.
     But Aristide's proximity a mere 115 miles (180 km) from Haiti's shores
could fuel anger in the slums.
     Illustrating the continuing tensions, Marine Staff Sgt. Tim Edwards
said a Marine patrol came under attack in Port-au-Prince twice on Thursday
evening.
     "Neither the Marines nor the gunmen suffered casualties," Edwards
said. A car dealership was destroyed by gunfire in the firefights. In a
separate incident, French troops came under fire on Friday morning, U.S.
military officials said.
     The gunmen were suspected of being Aristide supporters, enraged at the
loss of Haiti's first democratically elected leader in what many of them
are convinced was a U.S. coup.
     Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of
Staff, was due to visit Port-au-Prince on Saturday at the end of a Latin
America trip.
     Sent in under a U.N. mandate, the international force must restore
order in this deeply divided country of 8 million.
     The task is not easy as the rule of law has largely broken down. On
Friday, a screaming crowd in the capital stomped, kicked and beat a
suspected thief to death in the upscale hilltop suburb of Petionville in an
outburst of vigilante justice.
     Guy Philippe, a leader of the former soldiers who helped push Aristide
out, dismissed the worries about Aristide's proximity. "He's finished. He's
an old story," he said.
     But opposition leader Charles Baker, a wealthy industrialist, said,
"Patterson is making a very big mistake."
     "Aristide will inflame passions and give more fuel to his assassins.
If people are killed in Haiti with Aristide in Jamaica, Patterson will have
part of the blood on his hands."

     (Additional reporting by Amy Bracken in Port-au-Prince and Will Dunham
in Washington)